If you need another example of social media traction among engineers, let's look at design contests. We’ve done them forever, but social media takes this to a new level.

Just ask Gammell and Ellsworth, who teamed up to build—almost on a whim—a design contest around the (age-old, even "venerable"--yep that's what Bill Schweber called it) 555 timer IC. (It's ironic that this ancient device is the focus of a social media-driven design contest, isn't it?)

Why?

“Aside from the history and the instructional information available, the 555 is accessible to a broad range of people,” Gammell said in an interview. “With some care, it's possible to use in more complicated systems, as a lot of our early entries have shown. However, students and hobbyists can just as easily pick one up and use it in a new application.”

Next Tuesday, March 1, is the deadline, so get cracking if you're interested.

Why does social matter?

Flexibility: This project started out as Twitter chatter and once the decision was made, was rolling in two days

Reach: The chip’s creator, Hans Camenzind, is one of the judges

Openness: “Once we started working on the project, other tools like Skype, Wordpress, Email and Google Docs (to help keep track of our sponsors) was all we needed to get the project off the ground. And this all across a 3 hour time difference and 2,500 miles away,” Gammell said.

More traditional design contests, like the ones EE Times is involved in, also are leveraging social media in a big way, building microsites to house information and entries, using video to show design examples, and leveraging comments to get audience votes.
Cypress' challenge and the contest from STMicroelectronics are the most recent examples.

Engineering arguably is one of the most collaborative professions around, so it all makes sense, even if it took a few years for traction.

And if you wanna develop a new generation of engineers, what better way to engage and inspire than through social media and stuff like design contests.

P.S. Here’s Ellsworth’s video explanation of the origins of the 555 contest.

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The openness of social media can help engineers in more ways than they can think of. It reminds me of how open source projects helped create Linux and OpenOffice, and social media is able to replicate that too by spreading the word for help on a certain project or enlisting the opinions of many for a test run.
Julian - http://www.mediasnap.co.uk

The 555 - close but no cigar?
Did everyone love this device? I never thought the 555 was a properly finished design. It was a cheap and cheerful first attempt, and many circuits could be warped around its odd architecture, but it had several foibles that should have been fixed in the next iteration (the 556? -oh no they used that number already).
However, the chip took off so fast that it became the standard, warts and all, and not until the Intersil CMOS version appeared did another appear with any improvements.
While the 555 was good for some single-chip circuits I also saw circuits that used dozens. Gakk. I found that people loved it because it encapsulated several easily understood pieceparts: the monostable, the RC network, the standalone flipflop. These are the parts beloved of the newbie designer.
But then I was taught that the mark of an amateur design was the number of monostables all over it (kinda like using hard-coded constants, see?)
The 555 made monostables cool again and I am not sure that was a good thing because that stunted your growth as an designer.
I am probably just complaining because the 555's warts stopped me using it so often e.g. it couldn't do 0-100% PWM without help, its output spiked and it was actually not all that flexible (there were many things it could do but very few ways to get it to work right).
Maybe the smart follow-up to the competition would be to analyse the various entries and collate the positives and negatives for each device's usage, extract some generalised wisdom, then publish that intelligence into a guide for the next generation of utility chip designers, be they analog AND/OR digital.
Save history repeating itself, kinda thing?
Lastly, I would love to hear from anyone who was party to discussions about producing a follow-up or competitor at that time?

I would submit that just leaving comments on this site is a form of social media; particularly when we're talking about pop culture. Facebook and Twitter are just tools that you may or may not find useful. I have a son in Taiwan and three scattered around the States. Quick updates, sharing funny stories, sending pictures are all part of our interaction with each other.
I'm always surprised at how dismissive people can be when something new comes along. Often times just name along sends them into a tailspin. How could anything named Twitter be useful? YouTube, give me a break? How stupid that must be.
As the Grateful Dead pointed out it's "Just a box of rain... Believe it if you need if, if you don't, just pass it on."

I've always enjoyed playing with new toys primarily to understand the use cases and the potential value. I signed on to Twitter in 2007 (I think), tweeted a few times and thought "this is bizarre." Facebook made more sense, but there weren't many people in my social and business orbit on FB a few years ago.
It took many months of love-hate interplay with Twitter and FB for me to understand how to really use each (and that changes even today).
We can debate the benefits and distractions of various platforms, but I think the larger issue of digital social interaction and collaboration is undeniable.
I think the larger challenge is that the software will continue to adapt rapidly, and we may always be in a state of chasing after the next shiny object without perfecting the uses of the last shiny object.
To be continued (for sure).